By Cde Bekezela Mkonto ka Mthwakazi
Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) has discovered a new business model: extortion with a national anthem.
Thanks to the Broadcasting Amendment Act (No. 2 of 2025), signed into law in May and now kicking into full gear this August, the national broadcaster has turned every motorist into a walking, talking and non-listening subscriber — whether they like it or not.
From now on, before you can insure your car or renew your vehicle license, you must first prove you’ve paid for a car radio license.
Not a tax on driving, mind you — a tax on the possibility that you might, maybe, on a long enough road trip, accidentally tune in to ZBC for 30 seconds before switching to silence.
It’s a move so boldly illogical it borders on performance art.
Citizens must now pay for content they neither consume nor consent to.
This is not media support.
This is ideological alimony.
The supposed goal is to fund public broadcasting.
The real outcome is none other than a coerced cash cow for a broadcaster most Zimbabweans avoid more religiously than load shedding schedules.
ZBC, long accused of being the ZANU PF Praise angd Worship Hour with occasional weather updates, has struggled to maintain relevance — not to mention viewership — in a country where data bundles cost more than dignity.
Now, with this latest legislative sleight of hand, they’ve found a solution, don’t earn your audience — legally extract it.
Motorists already battered by fuel price hikes, pothole-induced repair bills, and the spiritual trial that is renewing a vehicle license in Zimbabwe, must now line up for yet another bureaucratic obstacle.
This time, to pay for a broadcaster that many feel has become a state propaganda tool in high-definition apathy.
True Patriots, woe unto you if your car doesn’t even have a radio.
In a scene straight out of a post-colonial sitcom, you’ll need to drive — yes, physically drive — to one of only two ZBC inspection centres in Harare.
There, a government-appointed radio whisperer will peer into your dashboard and decide whether you’re worthy of exemption.
If you’re in Tsholotsho or Chipinge?
Pack a lunch and a tent.
Insurance companies and licensing agencies — whose job is supposedly to keep vehicles and drivers legally protected — have been transformed into unpaid ZBC collection agents.
They’re now expected to police radio license compliance, decipher exemption protocols, and pacify frustrated motorists.
All in the name of a broadcaster they don’t work for and probably don’t watch either.
Meanwhile, ZBC pockets the millions with the smug serenity of an organisation that knows it’ll get paid regardless of ratings, relevance, or respect.
It would be funny if it weren’t so bleak.
In a country where millions hustle daily just to survive, ZBC’s funding woes have been elevated to national emergency status.
Meanwhile, schools crumble, hospitals go drugless, and water taps have become decorative plumbing.
The Broadcasting Amendment Act doesn’t simply introduce a new fee.
It enshrines a philosophy: that the citizen exists to serve the state’s vanity projects — not the other way around.
At its heart, this isn’t about broadcasting.
It’s about broad coercion.
About forcing every driver to fund a voice they don’t believe in, stories they don’t relate to, and narratives that often actively insult their intelligence.
The tragedy isn’t that the government found a new revenue stream.
The tragedy is that it did so by tying citizens’ freedom of movement to the financial health of a partisan broadcaster — one that insists on calling itself “public” while serving only a party.
In Zimbabwe’s new reality, you can’t drive unless you help ZBC talk.
Whether you listen or not doesn’t matter.
The only thing that matters is that you pay to be silenced.
